Introduction

This is all a fork of sameersbn/gitlab, but against the Enterprise Editionof Gitlab. It's intended for people who like the way that app is runwithin the container, but who have upgraded to Gitlab Enterprise.

If this works, I'll try to keep this repository updated. If the originalmaintainer is interested in releasing CE and EE images I'm also happy tofold this into a pull request and go away.

Original documentation follows below this point, please make any mentaladjustments necessary.

Issues

Docker is a relatively new project and is active being developed and tested by a thriving community of developers and testers and every release of docker features many enhancements and bugfixes.

Given the nature of the development and release cycle it is very important that you have the latest version of docker installed because any issue that you encounter might have already been fixed with a newer docker release.

Install the most recent version of the Docker Engine for your platform using the official Docker releases, which can also be installed using:

wget -qO- https://get.docker.com/ | sh

Fedora and RHEL/CentOS users should try disabling selinux with setenforce 0 and check if resolves the issue. If it does than there is not much that I can help you with. You can either stick with selinux disabled (not recommended by redhat) or switch to using ubuntu.

You may also set DEBUG=true to enable debugging of the entrypoint script, which could help you pin point any configuration issues.

If using the latest docker version and/or disabling selinux does not fix the issue then please file a issue request on the issues page.

In your issue report please make sure you provide the following information:

The host distribution and release version.

Output of the docker version command

Output of the docker info command

The docker run command you used to run the image (mask out the sensitive bits).

Prerequisites

Your docker host needs to have 1GB or more of available RAM to run GitLab. Please refer to the GitLab hardware requirements documentation for additional information.

Installation

Automated builds of the image are available on Dockerhub and is the recommended method of installation.

Quick Start

Generate random strings that are at least 64 characters long for each of GITLAB_SECRETS_OTP_KEY_BASE, GITLAB_SECRETS_DB_KEY_BASE, and GITLAB_SECRETS_SECRET_KEY_BASE. These values are used for the following:

GITLAB_SECRETS_OTP_KEY_BASE is used to encrypt 2FA secrets in the database. If you lose or rotate this secret, none of your users will be able to log in using 2FA.

GITLAB_SECRETS_DB_KEY_BASE is used to encrypt CI secret variables, as well as import credentials, in the database. If you lose or rotate this secret, you will not be able to use existing CI secrets.

GITLAB_SECRETS_SECRET_KEY_BASE is used for password reset links, and other 'standard' auth features. If you lose or rotate this secret, password reset tokens in emails will reset.

Tip: You can generate a random string using pwgen -Bsv1 64 and assign it as the value of GITLAB_SECRETS_DB_KEY_BASE.

Start GitLab using:

docker-compose up

Alternatively, you can manually launch the gitlab container and the supporting postgresql and redis containers by following this three step guide.

Linking to PostgreSQL Container

You can link this image with a postgresql container for the database requirements. The alias of the postgresql server container should be set to postgresql while linking with the gitlab image.

If a postgresql container is linked, only the DB_ADAPTER, DB_HOST and DB_PORT settings are automatically retrieved using the linkage. You may still need to set other database connection parameters such as the DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASS and so on.

To illustrate linking with a postgresql container, we will use the sameersbn/postgresql image. When using postgresql image in production you should mount a volume for the postgresql data store. Please refer the README of docker-postgresql for details.

First, lets pull the postgresql image from the docker index.

docker pull sameersbn/postgresql:9.4-19

For data persistence lets create a store for the postgresql and start the container.

SELinux users are also required to change the security context of the mount point so that it plays nicely with selinux.

Here the image will also automatically fetch the DB_NAME, DB_USER and DB_PASS variables from the postgresql container as they are specified in the docker run command for the postgresql container. This is made possible using the magic of docker links and works with the following images:

External MySQL Server

The image can be configured to use an external MySQL database. The database configuration should be specified using environment variables while starting the GitLab image.

Before you start the GitLab image create user and database for gitlab.

CREATE USER 'gitlab'@'%.%.%.%' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS `gitlabhq_production` DEFAULT CHARACTER SET `utf8` COLLATE `utf8_unicode_ci`;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `gitlabhq_production`.* TO 'gitlab'@'%.%.%.%';

Linking to MySQL Container

You can link this image with a mysql container for the database requirements. The alias of the mysql server container should be set to mysql while linking with the gitlab image.

If a mysql container is linked, only the DB_ADAPTER, DB_HOST and DB_PORT settings are automatically retrieved using the linkage. You may still need to set other database connection parameters such as the DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASS and so on.

To illustrate linking with a mysql container, we will use the sameersbn/mysql image. When using docker-mysql in production you should mount a volume for the mysql data store. Please refer the README of docker-mysql for details.

First, lets pull the mysql image from the docker index.

docker pull sameersbn/mysql:latest

For data persistence lets create a store for the mysql and start the container.

SELinux users are also required to change the security context of the mount point so that it plays nicely with selinux.

Here the image will also automatically fetch the DB_NAME, DB_USER and DB_PASS variables from the mysql container as they are specified in the docker run command for the mysql container. This is made possible using the magic of docker links and works with the following images:

Mail

The mail configuration should be specified using environment variables while starting the GitLab image. The configuration defaults to using gmail to send emails and requires the specification of a valid username and password to login to the gmail servers.

Reply by email

Since version 8.0.0 GitLab adds support for commenting on issues by replying to emails. Please read the documentation on reply by email to understand the requirements of this feature.

To enable this feature you need to provide IMAP configuration parameters that will allow GitLab to connect to your mail server and read mails. Additionally, you may need to specify GITLAB_INCOMING_EMAIL_ADDRESS if your incoming email address is not the same as the IMAP_USER.

SSL

Access to the gitlab application can be secured using SSL so as to prevent unauthorized access to the data in your repositories. While a CA certified SSL certificate allows for verification of trust via the CA, a self signed certificates can also provide an equal level of trust verification as long as each client takes some additional steps to verify the identity of your website. I will provide instructions on achieving this towards the end of this section.

When using CA certified certificates, these files are provided to you by the CA. When using self-signed certificates you need to generate these files yourself. Skip to Strengthening the server security section if you are armed with CA certified SSL certificates.

Strengthening the server security

Installation of the SSL Certificates

Out of the four files generated above, we need to install the gitlab.key, gitlab.crt and dhparam.pem files at the gitlab server. The CSR file is not needed, but do make sure you safely backup the file (in case you ever need it again).

The default path that the gitlab application is configured to look for the SSL certificates is at /home/git/data/certs, this can however be changed using the SSL_KEY_PATH, SSL_CERTIFICATE_PATH and SSL_DHPARAM_PATH configuration options.

If you remember from above, the /home/git/data path is the path of the data store, which means that we have to create a folder named certs/ inside /srv/docker/gitlab/gitlab/ and copy the files into it and as a measure of security we'll update the permission on the gitlab.key file to only be readable by the owner.

Great! we are now just one step away from having our application secured.

Enabling HTTPS support

HTTPS support can be enabled by setting the GITLAB_HTTPS option to true. Additionally, when using self-signed SSL certificates you need to the set SSL_SELF_SIGNED option to true as well. Assuming we are using self-signed certificates

In this configuration, any requests made over the plain http protocol will automatically be redirected to use the https protocol. However, this is not optimal when using a load balancer.

Configuring HSTS

HSTS if supported by the browsers makes sure that your users will only reach your sever via HTTPS. When the user comes for the first time it sees a header from the server which states for how long from now this site should only be reachable via HTTPS - that's the HSTS max-age value.

With NGINX_HSTS_MAXAGE you can configure that value. The default value is 31536000 seconds. If you want to disable a already sent HSTS MAXAGE value, set it to 0.

If you want to completely disable HSTS set NGINX_HSTS_ENABLED to false.

Using HTTPS with a load balancer

Load balancers like nginx/haproxy/hipache talk to backend applications over plain http and as such the installation of ssl keys and certificates are not required and should NOT be installed in the container. The SSL configuration has to instead be done at the load balancer.

However, when using a load balancer you MUST set GITLAB_HTTPS to true. Additionally you will need to set the SSL_SELF_SIGNED option to true if self signed SSL certificates are in use.

With this in place, you should configure the load balancer to support handling of https requests. But that is out of the scope of this document. Please refer to Using SSL/HTTPS with HAProxy for information on the subject.

When using a load balancer, you probably want to make sure the load balancer performs the automatic http to https redirection. Information on this can also be found in the link above.

In summation, when using a load balancer, the docker command would look for the most part something like this:

Establishing trust with your server

This section deals will self-signed ssl certificates. If you are using CA certified certificates, your done.

This section is more of a client side configuration so as to add a level of confidence at the client to be 100 percent sure they are communicating with whom they think they.

This is simply done by adding the servers certificate into their list of trusted certificates. On ubuntu, this is done by copying the gitlab.crt file to /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/ and executing update-ca-certificates.

Again, this is a client side configuration which means that everyone who is going to communicate with the server should perform this configuration on their machine. In short, distribute the gitlab.crt file among your developers and ask them to add it to their list of trusted ssl certificates. Failure to do so will result in errors that look like this:

You can do the same at the web browser. Instructions for installing the root certificate for firefox can be found here. You will find similar options chrome, just make sure you install the certificate under the authorities tab of the certificate manager dialog.

There you have it, thats all there is to it.

Installing Trusted SSL Server Certificates

If your GitLab CI server is using self-signed SSL certificates then you should make sure the GitLab CI server certificate is trusted on the GitLab server for them to be able to talk to each other.

The default path image is configured to look for the trusted SSL certificates is at /home/git/data/certs/ca.crt, this can however be changed using the SSL_CA_CERTIFICATES_PATH configuration option.

Copy the ca.crt file into the certs directory on the datastore. The ca.crt file should contain the root certificates of all the servers you want to trust. With respect to GitLab CI, this will be the contents of the gitlab_ci.crt file as described in the README of the docker-gitlab-ci container.

By default, our own server certificate gitlab.crt is added to the trusted certificates list.

Deploy to a subdirectory (relative url root)

By default GitLab expects that your application is running at the root (eg. /). This section explains how to run your application inside a directory.

Let's assume we want to deploy our application to '/git'. GitLab needs to know this directory to generate the appropriate routes. This can be specified using the GITLAB_RELATIVE_URL_ROOT configuration option like so:

GitLab will now be accessible at the /git path, e.g. http://www.example.com/git.

Note: The GITLAB_RELATIVE_URL_ROOT parameter should always begin with a slash andSHOULD NOThave any trailing slashes.

OmniAuth Integration

GitLab leverages OmniAuth to allow users to sign in using Twitter, GitHub, and other popular services. Configuring OmniAuth does not prevent standard GitLab authentication or LDAP (if configured) from continuing to work. Users can choose to sign in using any of the configured mechanisms.

CAS3

To enable the CAS OmniAuth provider you must register your application with your CAS instance. This requires the service URL GitLab will supply to CAS. It should be something like: https://git.example.com:443/users/auth/cas3/callback?url. By default handling for SLO is enabled, you only need to configure CAS for backchannel logout.

For example, if your cas server url is https://sso.example.com, then adding --env 'OAUTH_CAS3_SERVER=https://sso.example.com' to the docker run command enables support for CAS3 OAuth. Please refer to Available Configuration Parameters for additional CAS3 configuration parameters.

Google

To enable the Google OAuth2 OmniAuth provider you must register your application with Google. Google will generate a client ID and secret key for you to use. Please refer to the GitLab documentation for the procedure to generate the client ID and secret key with google.

Once you have the client ID and secret keys generated, configure them using the OAUTH_GOOGLE_API_KEY and OAUTH_GOOGLE_APP_SECRET environment variables respectively.

For example, if your client ID is xxx.apps.googleusercontent.com and client secret key is yyy, then adding --env 'OAUTH_GOOGLE_API_KEY=xxx.apps.googleusercontent.com' --env 'OAUTH_GOOGLE_APP_SECRET=yyy' to the docker run command enables support for Google OAuth.

You can also restrict logins to a single domain by adding --env 'OAUTH_GOOGLE_RESTRICT_DOMAIN=example.com'. This is particularly useful when combined with --env 'OAUTH_ALLOW_SSO=true' and --env 'OAUTH_BLOCK_AUTO_CREATED_USERS=false'.

Facebook

To enable the Facebook OAuth2 OmniAuth provider you must register your application with Facebook. Facebook will generate a API key and secret for you to use. Please refer to the GitLab documentation for the procedure to generate the API key and secret.

Once you have the API key and secret generated, configure them using the OAUTH_FACEBOOK_API_KEY and OAUTH_FACEBOOK_APP_SECRET environment variables respectively.

For example, if your API key is xxx and the API secret key is yyy, then adding --env 'OAUTH_FACEBOOK_API_KEY=xxx' --env 'OAUTH_FACEBOOK_APP_SECRET=yyy' to the docker run command enables support for Facebook OAuth.

Twitter

To enable the Twitter OAuth2 OmniAuth provider you must register your application with Twitter. Twitter will generate a API key and secret for you to use. Please refer to the GitLab documentation for the procedure to generate the API key and secret with twitter.

Once you have the API key and secret generated, configure them using the OAUTH_TWITTER_API_KEY and OAUTH_TWITTER_APP_SECRET environment variables respectively.

For example, if your API key is xxx and the API secret key is yyy, then adding --env 'OAUTH_TWITTER_API_KEY=xxx' --env 'OAUTH_TWITTER_APP_SECRET=yyy' to the docker run command enables support for Twitter OAuth.

GitHub

To enable the GitHub OAuth2 OmniAuth provider you must register your application with GitHub. GitHub will generate a Client ID and secret for you to use. Please refer to the GitLab documentation for the procedure to generate the Client ID and secret with github.

Once you have the Client ID and secret generated, configure them using the OAUTH_GITHUB_API_KEY and OAUTH_GITHUB_APP_SECRET environment variables respectively.

For example, if your Client ID is xxx and the Client secret is yyy, then adding --env 'OAUTH_GITHUB_API_KEY=xxx' --env 'OAUTH_GITHUB_APP_SECRET=yyy' to the docker run command enables support for GitHub OAuth.

GitLab

To enable the GitLab OAuth2 OmniAuth provider you must register your application with GitLab. GitLab will generate a Client ID and secret for you to use. Please refer to the GitLab documentation for the procedure to generate the Client ID and secret with GitLab.

Once you have the Client ID and secret generated, configure them using the OAUTH_GITLAB_API_KEY and OAUTH_GITLAB_APP_SECRET environment variables respectively.

For example, if your Client ID is xxx and the Client secret is yyy, then adding --env 'OAUTH_GITLAB_API_KEY=xxx' --env 'OAUTH_GITLAB_APP_SECRET=yyy' to the docker run command enables support for GitLab OAuth.

BitBucket

To enable the BitBucket OAuth2 OmniAuth provider you must register your application with BitBucket. BitBucket will generate a Client ID and secret for you to use. Please refer to the GitLab documentation for the procedure to generate the Client ID and secret with BitBucket.

Once you have the Client ID and secret generated, configure them using the OAUTH_BITBUCKET_API_KEY and OAUTH_BITBUCKET_APP_SECRET environment variables respectively.

For example, if your Client ID is xxx and the Client secret is yyy, then adding --env 'OAUTH_BITBUCKET_API_KEY=xxx' --env 'OAUTH_BITBUCKET_APP_SECRET=yyy' to the docker run command enables support for BitBucket OAuth.

SAML

GitLab can be configured to act as a SAML 2.0 Service Provider (SP). This allows GitLab to consume assertions from a SAML 2.0 Identity Provider (IdP) such as Microsoft ADFS to authenticate users. Please refer to the GitLab documentation.

The following parameters have to be configured to enable SAML OAuth support in this image: OAUTH_SAML_ASSERTION_CONSUMER_SERVICE_URL, OAUTH_SAML_IDP_CERT_FINGERPRINT, OAUTH_SAML_IDP_SSO_TARGET_URL, OAUTH_SAML_ISSUER and OAUTH_SAML_NAME_IDENTIFIER_FORMAT.

You can also override the default "Sign in with" button label with OAUTH_SAML_LABEL.

Auth0

To enable the Auth0 OmniAuth provider you must register your application with auth0.

Configure the following environment variables OAUTH_AUTH0_CLIENT_ID, OAUTH_AUTH0_CLIENT_SECRET and OAUTH_AUTH0_DOMAIN to complete the integration.

Microsoft Azure

To enable the Microsoft Azure OAuth2 OmniAuth provider you must register your application with Azure. Azure will generate a Client ID, Client secret and Tenant ID for you to use. Please refer to the GitLab documentation for the procedure.

Once you have the Client ID, Client secret and Tenant ID generated, configure them using the OAUTH_AZURE_API_KEY, OAUTH_AZURE_API_SECRET and OAUTH_AZURE_TENANT_ID environment variables respectively.

For example, if your Client ID is xxx, the Client secret is yyy and the Tenant ID is zzz, then adding --env 'OAUTH_AZURE_API_KEY=xxx' --env 'OAUTH_AZURE_API_SECRET=yyy' --env 'OAUTH_AZURE_TENANT_ID=zzz' to the docker run command enables support for Microsoft Azure OAuth.

External Issue Trackers

Since version 7.10.0 support for external issue trackers can be enabled in the "Service Templates" section of the settings panel.

If you are using the docker-redmine image, you can one up the gitlab integration with redmine by adding --volumes-from=gitlab flag to the docker run command while starting the redmine container.

By using the above option the /home/git/data/repositories directory will be accessible by the redmine container and now you can add your git repository path to your redmine project. If, for example, in your gitlab server you have a project named opensource/gitlab, the bare repository will be accessible at /home/git/data/repositories/opensource/gitlab.git in the redmine container.

Host UID / GID Mapping

Per default the container is configured to run gitlab as user and group git with uid and gid1000. The host possibly uses this ids for different purposes leading to unfavorable effects. From the host it appears as if the mounted data volumes are owned by the host's user/group 1000.

Also the container processes seem to be executed as the host's user/group 1000. The container can be configured to map the uid and gid of git to different ids on host by passing the environment variables USERMAP_UID and USERMAP_GID. The following command maps the ids to user and group git on the host.

Piwik

If you want to monitor your gitlab instance with Piwik, there are two options to setup: PIWIK_URL and PIWIK_SITE_ID.These options should contain something like:

PIWIK_URL=piwik.example.org

PIWIK_SITE_ID=42

Available Configuration Parameters

Please refer the docker run command options for the --env-file flag where you can specify all required environment variables in a single file. This will save you from writing a potentially long docker run command. Alternatively you can use docker-compose.

Below is the complete list of available options that can be used to customize your gitlab installation.

Parameter

Description

DEBUG

Set this to true to enable entrypoint debugging.

SKIP_SIDEKIQ

Don't run Sidekiq on this host.

GITLAB_HOST

The hostname of the GitLab server. Defaults to localhost

GITLAB_CI_HOST

If you are migrating from GitLab CI use this parameter to configure the redirection to the GitLab service so that your existing runners continue to work without any changes. No defaults.

GITLAB_PORT

The port of the GitLab server. This value indicates the public port on which the GitLab application will be accessible on the network and appropriately configures GitLab to generate the correct urls. It does not affect the port on which the internal nginx server will be listening on. Defaults to 443 if GITLAB_HTTPS=true, else defaults to 80.

GITLAB_SECRETS_DB_KEY_BASE

Used to encrypt build variables. Ensure that you don't lose it. You can generate one using pwgen -Bsv1 64. If you are migrating from GitLab CI, you need to set this value to the value of GITLAB_CI_SECRETS_DB_KEY_BASE. No defaults.

A backup will be created in the backups folder of the Data Store. You can change the location of the backups using the GITLAB_BACKUP_DIR configuration parameter.

P.S. Backups can also be generated on a running instance using docker exec as described in the Rake Tasks section. However, to avoid undesired side-effects, I advice against running backup and restore operations on a running instance.

Restoring Backups

Gitlab also defines a rake task to restore a backup.

Before performing a restore make sure the container is stopped and removed to avoid container name conflicts.

docker stop gitlab && docker rm gitlab

Execute the rake task to restore a backup. Make sure you run the container in interactive mode -it.

Automated Backups

The image can be configured to automatically take backups daily, weekly or monthly using the GITLAB_BACKUP_SCHEDULE configuration option.

Daily backups are created at GITLAB_BACKUP_TIME which defaults to 04:00 everyday. Weekly backups are created every Sunday at the same time as the daily backups. Monthly backups are created on the 1st of every month at the same time as the daily backups.

By default, when automated backups are enabled, backups are held for a period of 7 days. While when automated backups are disabled, the backups are held for an infinite period of time. This can behavior can be configured via the GITLAB_BACKUP_EXPIRY option.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Remote Backups

The image can be configured to automatically upload the backups to an AWS S3 bucket. To enable automatic AWS backups first add --env 'AWS_BACKUPS=true' to the docker run command. In addition AWS_BACKUP_REGION and AWS_BACKUP_BUCKET must be properly configured to point to the desired AWS location. Finally an IAM user must be configured with appropriate access permission and their AWS keys exposed through AWS_BACKUP_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_BACKUP_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY.

More details about the appropriate IAM user properties can found on doc.gitlab.com

AWS uploads are performed alongside normal backups, both through the appropriate app:rake command and when an automatic backup is performed.

Rake Tasks

The app:rake command allows you to run gitlab rake tasks. To run a rake task simply specify the task to be executed to the app:rake command. For example, if you want to gather information about GitLab and the system it runs on.

GitLabHQ releases new versions on the 22nd of every month, bugfix releases immediately follow. I update this project almost immediately when a release is made (at least it has been the case so far). If you are using the image in production environments I recommend that you delay updates by a couple of days after the gitlab release, allowing some time for the dust to settle down.

Upgrading to sameersbn/gitlab:8.6.6 from sameersbn/gitlab:7.x.x can cause issues. It is therefore required that you first upgrade to sameersbn/gitlab:8.0.5-1 before upgrading to sameersbn/gitlab:8.1.0 or higher.

Replace x.x.x with the version you are upgrading from. For example, if you are upgrading from version 6.0.0, set x.x.x to 6.0.0

Step 4: Start the image

Note: Since GitLab 8.0.0 you need to provide the GITLAB_SECRETS_DB_KEY_BASE parameter while starting the image.

Note: Since GitLab 8.11.0 you need to provide the GITLAB_SECRETS_SECRET_KEY_BASE and GITLAB_SECRETS_OTP_KEY_BASE parameters while starting the image. These should initially both have the same value as the contents of the /home/git/data/.secret file. See Available Configuration Parameters for more information on these parameters.

docker run --name gitlab -d [OPTIONS] leftathome/gitlab-ee:8.11.0

Shell Access

For debugging and maintenance purposes you may want access the containers shell. If you are using docker version 1.3.0 or higher you can access a running containers shell using docker exec command.